Junk miles, city miles, and hills

Those of us who have been running for a while (OK for twenty-five years in my case) know exactly what those articles about being in a runner's rut are talking about. There's comfort in the familiar, so we establish weekly routines and keep to them -- our mileage, our routes, even the direction we run the route.

But all that comfortable time on the road isn't doing us as much good as it should be. I just read a great description of the condition by a trainer in Runner's World: Those familiar miles at our same old pace are like highway driving. Our body gets efficient at doing them and then it doesn't require so much fuel. What we need is some in-town driving, some stopping and starting, to rev up the engine and shake up the muscles.

Dena just led me on some city mileage today. She's training for the NC Marathon and doing it right. She's run lots of her longer runs on forgiving trails, she goes to yoga classes to stay flexible, even started some resistance work with a trainer. And on Mondays she runs hills. I joined her because, well, I'm just a sucker for a good time.

Actually, I enjoyed the workout. We ran an easy mile or so, then sprinted (in my case, approximated a sprint) a hill, maybe 100 yards long that starts out easy but churns your gut as you reach the top. Then we turned right around, jogged back, and repeated ourselves, six times total before jogging the mile back to our cars.

It was like speed work but without that hamster in a cage feeling you can get circling a track. We could see the top, then enjoy the slow jog back. And I'm pretty sure my engine had to restart itself a time or two. Inefficiency never felt so good.